Panel Is Set To Probe New York City Corruption Scandal

The mayor of New York City has named a five-member commission with a
$1-million budget to investigate the drug and corruption scandals that
have rocked the nation's largest school system over the past two
months.

Mayor Edward I. Koch announced the formation of the Commission on
Integrity in the Public Schools shortly before Christmas, saying he
would ask the city council to grant the panel subpoena powers to enable
it to compel testimony from witnesses.

The investigative body will be known as the "Gill Commission," after
its appointed chairman, James F. Gill, a former assistant district
attorney.

The commission has a broad mandate to examine the city's 18-year-old
system of decentralized school governance and recommend reforms.

But it also has political significance in the city, marking a new
level of in4volvement for Mayor Koch in the affairs of the
scandal-ridden school system. While the mayor has long been a critic of
the system's performance, he has heretofore avoided actions that could
be seen as infringing on the power of local school officials.

In recent remarks, however, the mayor has pointed to what he says is
a pressing need to shore up public confidence in the schools, which he
describes as being in trouble even before this most recent round of
scandals.

Mr. Koch formed the commission after Gov. Mario Cuomo declined his
request to name a state-level body to look into the corruption
charges.

The mayor's commission joins a host of other investigations that
have been set in motion since Nov. 9, when the principal of an
elementary school in the Bronx was arrested for allegedly buying
cocaine from a street dealer.

The arrest touched off a flood of al8legations that other
community-school-board members and employees have been engaged in
illegal drug use and sales, the trading of jobs for political favors,
and the theft of school equipment and supplies, among other
charges.

School and law-enforcement officials are currently investigating
specific charges leveled against board members and school employees in
a total of 11 of the city's 32 community districts.

The investigations have already led to the arrest of two teachers on
drug-related charges and one other on a weapons-violation charge.

Revelations that the Bronx principal arrested in November had
retained his position despite a long history of work-related problems
deepened the scandal and raised questions about the oversight functions
of the community districts, which run the city's elementary and junior
high schools.

The state department of education last month initiated a new
reel10lview of the city's decentralized governance system that will
focus on the central board's power to remedy persistent problems in the
community school districts.

A separate state evaluation of the 18-year-old system of school
decentralization was mandated by legislation passed last month.

The widening schools scandal has also prompted state legislators to
act on a bill aimed at reducing the politicization of the city's
community boards. The measure prohibits school employees and political
leaders from serving on the boards and requires all board candidates to
submit to the state's tighter financial-disclosure and
conflict-of-interest requirements.

The new law will take effect in time to apply to community-board
elections slated for May 2.

The bill also requires Richard R. Green, New York City's schools
chancellor, to conduct his own study of school-board campaign4practices
and political patronage in the community districts, and to transmit his
findings to the legislature by March 15.

A separate bill passed by the legislature last month attempts to
address the city's pressing facilities problems by creating a new
school-construction authority to expedite the approval of building
contracts.

The existing process for approving new construction had been blamed
for delaying for several years the completion of facilities badly
needed to alleviate serious overcrowding in some community
districts.

The new law exempts city school-construction projects from certain
state labor laws for a period of five years and transfers authority
over the construction from the citywide board of education to a
three-member panel that includes Chancellor Green.

The state's action also clears the way for the use of $600 million
in surplus municipal funds for school construction. That sum will be
added to the $5.2 billion the city plans to spend on the district's
capital needs over the next five years.

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